Software Engineer Resume

Whether you’re a new-to-the-job-market software engineer or a senior developer, you need to know how to structure your resume to best reflect your experience and qualifications.

With various software engineering skills, languages, and methodologies, you may be confused about what to include when space on your resume is limited.

Keep reading to learn how to create a strong software engineer resume that successfully targets the position you’re applying for.

1. Keep your resume to one page

Hiring managers are often swamped with hundreds of resumes for each job opening. Even if you’re highly qualified, it’s important to submit a concise single-page resume highlighting only your most important qualifications.

Employers don’t need to know every position you’ve ever held – they just want to see your most important software development experience.

To best showcase your qualifications on one page, prioritize experiences that demonstrate skills mentioned in the job description. Additionally, stick to five bullet points or fewer for each entry in your resume’s work history section.

2. List relevant software engineer skills clearly

If you’re unsure what skills to include on your resume, we compiled internal data to determine the top five most popular software engineering skills of 2023. Any of these skills make a great addition to your resume, as long as they’re relevant to the position:

Make sure to be transparent about your familiarity with a given language and skill, especially if it’s mentioned in the job description. A good way to demonstrate your proficiency is to provide concrete examples of how you applied your skills and what the results were.

Here are a few tips to help you effectively work relevant skills into your software engineer resume:

Do:

• Find crossover skills relating to the job posting
• Research the company as much as possible before applying
• Write a strong, convincing resume summary like an elevator pitch

Don't:

• Send a generic resume or lie about your skills for a job
• Make sweeping assumptions about the role
• Write a career objective section instead of a career summary

3.  Back up your accomplishments with numbers

When listing accomplishments throughout your resume, one of the best ways to make your resume stand out is to add hard numbers to your achievements. Adding numbers to a key result helps demonstrate your value to potential employers.

Here’s an example of how to do this effectively:

Designed an internal website for agents and management, saving an average of $8,000 in labor costs per week.

In this example, the candidate emphasizes the exact financial benefit (dollars saved) of their efforts.

Led a development project for a web scraping program in Python to help the firm download public data, including over 6,000 company descriptions and stock quotes, to increase research efficiency by over 40%.

In the above example, the candidate shows not only their skills in leadership  — an important soft skill — but also how they used their Python skills to improve the company’s research efficiency in hard numbers.

4. Tailor your work experience section to the job description

Tailoring your resume to each position you apply for increases your chances of getting an interview because you demonstrate that you possess the exact qualifications the employer is looking for. Additionally, showing that you’ve done thorough research on the company makes you seem more motivated.

First, research the company and take note of their products, technologies, and goals. When writing your resume, try to highlight skills and experiences that demonstrate how you can help the business meet their needs.

Then, read through the job description paying special attention to requirements and desired qualifications. Work these keywords naturally into your resume.

In your work experience section, follow this formula to keep your bullet points clear and concise:

Action verb + Task (or project) + Result

Finally, optimize your resume introduction and professional experience sections by addressing the job’s needs with your related background. Then, expand on those experiences and complete your job application with a matching software engineer cover letter.

5. Strengthen your resume with additional sections

Strengthen your resume by adding sections when appropriate to demonstrate additional qualifications like:

• Credentials
• Language skills
• Certifications and licenses
• Awards or notable accomplishments
• Personal projects
• Volunteer experience

In particular, adding a section for personal projects on your resume is a good way to show that you’re a qualified engineer, even if you don’t have much traditional work experience.

Adding additional sections to your resume will help you stand out from the competition and increase your chances of getting hired for the job you want.